improfane's Journal: Workarounds

I was talking to a friend about how backwards compatibility can sometimes be dangerous (more specifically, how the old Windows versions and new releases). Often, when a bug crops up, one finds a workaround to keep things moving smoothly.

I came up with the following analogy and thought it was useful, I'll use it as an example from now on.

Imagine you have a calculator that has a bug, which means all calculations are off by one each time. To workaround this bug, you instruct all users to add one to your calculation, this makes the calculation correct. This is all fine until you solve the off by one problem.

Users of the fixed calculator are now having problems where the calculation is one above the correct. They still use the workaround to add one, which now is pointless because it has been fixed which is ironic since the workaround actually causes this new problem.

This wasn't the exact text I used but the gist remains the same.

The Solution?

Perhaps workarounds should be clearly indicated. When the problem the workaround temporarily fixes is properly fixed, the workaround is automatically-silently-removed/dismissed when discovered. In my calculator analogy, this would be something like;

Workaround: Ans + 1

When the new version comes out, the workaround is removed.

Remove Workaround

written by Improfane